Impress Conference

You are President Donald Trump. Coronavirus infections are rising and markets are falling. You look weak and you're starting to doubt yourself, but there's no time for that, you're on the news! You have to give a speech before the stock markets close in order boost confidence in yourself and the markets, and, sure, maybe bring down the projected rate of infection.

In Impress Conference you  deliver a Covid-19 update speech: sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase. In order to utter those phrases, you perform the physical equivalent of Donald Trump's mental process and mash the keys on your keyboard. What you say matters, to yourself and the outside world.

With any given phrase you can praise yourself, attack your enemies, promote businesses, or implement and support public health measures. Your choice of words affects President Trump's ego (as represented by the size of his hands), the stock market, and the projected rate of infection for the virus. You will need to keep all of these in check (or the first two anyway) if you're to make it to the closing of the markets.

With four possible endings and an endless number of speech combinations, Impress Conference makes President Trump's public appearances even less necessary.

Impress Conference was conceived in the first week of the Coronavirus lockdown, when President Trump's press briefings were a daily occurrence, and it is about that particular, political, moment in time. That moment has passed. The protests that have broken out in response to the killing of George Floyd have highlighted the systemic racism of our country and its police forces, and also the racist words and deeds of President Trump himself. Those subjects are unfortunately beyond the scope of Impress Conference, but in the interest of supporting those fighting for justice, I encourage people to donate to and buy from Black organizations and support the protesters. A few resources are listed below. 

• Community bail funds and legal representation listed by city
• Black Game Developers, a directory of Black creators ready to be hired
• A list of 10 Games by Black Developers you can buy now
• Black Lives Matter Support Bundle on Itch.io